What You Find in Your Basement After Reading the Sports News
My Jim Rice autographed baseball, from sometime in the late 1970s
In 5 years of blogging I have never written about sports. This is the first time, and probably the last time, that I will.
I was a big baseball fan when I was a kid, but lost interest as I grew older. A few weeks ago I happened to notice in a daily news summary that my childhood baseball hero was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame: “…slugging outfielder Jim Rice, whose entire 16-year career was spent with the Boston Red Sox. In a vote of media members… [he] received the necessary 75 percent of the votes in his 15th and last year on the ballot.” Apparently it was quite controversial whether he was worthy of the Hall of Fame. I mainly remember him as a fearsome hitter, but also someone who was all business and didn’t get too hung up on himself as a celebrity. I also distinctly remember when “…he rushed into the stands to help a young boy who had been struck in the head by a line drive off the bat of Dave Stapleton. As other players and spectators watched, Rice left the dugout and entered the stands to help 4-year old Jonathan Keane, who was bleeding heavily. Rice carried the boy onto the field, through the Red Sox dugout and into the clubhouse, where the young boy could be treated by the team’s medical staff. Team doctor Arthur Pappas later said that Rice’s actions may have saved the boy’s life.” I don’t know how the Hall of Fame nomination system works, but everything I’ve read so far about his nomination has been all about statistics. I would think that character matters too.
The news sent me into my basement, rummaging through boxes, where I unearthed my baseball that was signed to me by Jim Rice when I was 9 or 10 years old. I’m not interested in selling it, but I think I will find a better place to display it now 
. And sitting next to it in the box, I found my old hand held video game, Head to Head Football. It still works! It’s essentially a glorified version of Pong, oriented horizontally instead of vertically. But judging by this early 80s commercial for it (you can find anything on YouTube), it must be the best game ever!
In reading about Rice I happened to come across some striking baseball news from Japan: a woman is now pitching for a minor league team. Baseball is taken at least as seriously in Japan as it is here, and like the US, the major and minor leagues have always been the exclusive domain of men, so this is a big story. And, of course, there’s a Red Sox connection: 
Eri Yoshida, who left a line of male batters hitless in tryouts in November, recently signed on to become the first woman to play in professional baseball in Japan. Her drafting into pro ball has catapulted her from little-known high school jock to media darling, with camera crews following her daily rounds from calligraphy class to the dugout. Clips of her quirky side-armed pitch seem to be stock footage on nightly sports and news programs…
Yoshida began developing her signature pitch, the knuckle ball, a few years ago after her father showed her a video of Tim Wakefield, the longtime knuckle-baller for the Boston Red Sox. Her father thought she should develop a special skill to distinguish herself. She hoped the knuckle ball, which requires technique instead of power, would allow her to succeed in baseball despite her tiny frame. Her fluttering pitches top out at about 60 m.p.h., but are elusive to hit.
In discussing the story with Maria, I also learned a little more about Japanese culture. At first I thought it was insulting that the team’s coach referred to her as “Eri-chan.” Chan is a diminutive honorific that is used when addressing children (it’s like Mr. or Ms., but for kids). But Maria explained that in this context, it’s intended for cuteness and perhaps a bit of ribbing, but not in a sexist way. She said, for example, a chubby or boyish-looking male player might also be called “chan” by his teammates. I also thought it was odd that she showed up to her first press conference in her high school uniform. But this is in fact proper behavior – she’s fresh out of high school, and when you’re a student in Japan and you’re attending a formal event, you’re supposed to wear your school uniform.
Only towards the end of our time living in Tokyo did it finally dawn on me that I should see a Japanese baseball game. I ended up not having a chance. After we returned to the US, I came across this blog post describing an American’s first time at a Japanese baseball game, and it made me wish I had tried a little harder to make it to a game:
Having read before the game that Japanese baseball fans were an extremely noisy and energetic lot, I was surprised when, during the first half of the first inning, only quiet background chatter could be heard emanating from the crowd… Just as I was about to ask my friend why the crowd seemed so unenthusiastic, the third out was registered, and the Hanshin Tigers came up to bat.
And suddenly, every person in the crowd had their eyes riveted to the field. They were violently pounding together the plastic baseball-bat shaped noisemakers they had purchased outside the stadium in time with the drummers stationed in front of each section. They were chanting, singing. Giant flags were waved by excited fans. The cheering was accompanied by hand gestures, and both the gestures and cheers were different for each player. I was hit with such a deafening wall of sound that I stood dazed for a moment before grabbing my camera, snapping a few pictures of the crowd, and grabbing my own set of noisemakers and joining in.
…[A]t the beginning of the seventh inning, something interesting happened. Colorful balloons gradually started appearing in the hands of fans throughout the stadium… During what, in America, would have been the seventh inning stretch, the Tiger’s official theme song was again sung, and this time, it seemed almost everyone in the stadium sang along. After the singing was done, everyone quickly released their balloons. …I later learned that the release of balloons during the seventh inning stretch is a Hanshin Tigers tradition, performed by fans at both home and away games. Towards the end of the game, when it appeared certain the Tigers would be winning, the balloons began again to appear throughout the crowd, and when the final out was called for the Baystars, the sky was again momentarily filled with the colorful balloons.
Having launched their balloons for a second time in celebration of the Tigers’ victory, I assumed that the crowd would quickly begin to file out of the stadium. Instead, though, everyone stuck around for a good twenty minutes, singing songs of celebration and cheering their victorious team…
Whenever we make it back to Japan, going to a ball game is at the top of my to do list.
